10 mars 2017

The second annual World Vertical Week was not only about ascent meters– even though we dug deep in the data. The Vertical Week was also about enjoying the moments and sharing the experience. Here are the photo contest winners and their stories!

World Vertical Week was held last week and the hundreds of pictures tagged with #verticalweek on Instagram give a great overall look into what people have been up to during the week. Three of the most inspirational photos were taken by Hollie Holden, Sami Renner and Christoph Oberschneider. Each one of the winners will receive a new Suunto Spartan Ultra to accompany them on their future adventures.

“The Vertical Week was a great opportunity for me to start building my strength and climbing skills ahead of my upcoming training season for my 1st 50 mile Ultra Marathon - the Squamish 50 in August which is a tough, mountainous course with 11,000 feet (3350m) of climbing!

I set myself the goal of covering a similar amount of climbing during Vertical Week so I spent a lot of time on a local trail called the BCMC which starts at the base of Grouse Mountain climbing to the top. This trail has 850m of elevation gain in just 3km of climbing! I ended up doing this trail 4 times in the week (3 times within one 24hr period!) then finished off the week running trails with my local run crew, Vancouver Running Company Flight Crew, surpassing my 3k goal and hit 4000m for the week instead!

The weather in Vancouver has been unseasonably cold, with lots of snow & wet rain and I wouldn't have done anywhere near as much climbing last week if it wasn't for the awesome community of friends that I have here who are willing to come climb mountains in a snow storm with me!”

“The photo was taken on the last of three summits at the “Watzmann-überschreitung”, a famous summer tour in my hometown with over 24km and 2500m of climbing. The goal for me was to do this very technical tour with skis. As I reached the third summit, I shared my last Powerbar with a bird.

A few days earlier during the Vertical Week I was in Zermatt, reaching Breithorn’s (4164m) west and east summits on skis, and on two more skitours. All in all, my Vertical Week was about 7500m of elevation gain over 65km.”

“I work as a backcountry skiing photographer in Austria, so my goal each winter season is to capture the beauty of backcountry skiing & ski touring, to share my passion for the sport with as many people as possible and ultimately to get more people to enjoy life in the outdoors.

So far we have had a very dry winter here in the Alps, so getting good shots has not been an easy task. So when it finally started snowing 10 days ago, I headed out to Sportgastein (a freeride spot close to Salzburg) with two good friends. We found some beautiful lines in the backcountry with lift-supported ski touring and I managed to get some good shots. And that's how I also spent the rest of the Vertical Week, ski touring in the mountains around Salzburg and trying to capture the beauty of the winter landscape and some more skiing action before the snow starts melting again.”

–Christophe Oberschneider, Austria

Congratulations to our three winners and thank you very much everyone for sharing your Vertical Week moments!